Guillaume Dufay. Missae Sine Nomine, Ave Regina Coelorum, Caput Clemencic Consort (vinyl Lps)

This superb disc of music by one of Spain's most talented early 16th century composers is exactly the sort of boost that the less well-known repertoire needs in its search for a place in today's CD collection. It is in every way a model of what a recording of Renaissance polyphony ought to be… The all male vocal ensemble sings with enormous conviction as well as firm control of rhythm and phrasing. Combining the voices with energetically played sackbuts produces a rich and dark-hued sound that feels authentically Spanish, and does full justice to this very fine music.

Rene Clemencic & Clemencic Consort - Carmina Burana [Original Version]
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 1,15 GB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Harmonia Mundi # HMA 190336.38 | Country/Year: France 1990, 1975-78
Genre: Classical | Style: Medieval

The words "original version" on the cover of this release are doubtless intended to indicate to the casual browser that this is not a recording of Carl Orff's choral spectacle called Carmina Burana, but of the pieces that inspired that work, contained in a medieval manuscript rediscovered in the nineteenth century in a Bavarian village called Benediktbeuern (hence "Carmina Burana," or songs or Beuern).

Famous as its title has become through Carl Orff's work of the same name, the original Carmina burana—a German manuscript collection of mostly secular songs, probably compiled in the early thirteenth century—is all but unknown to modern listeners. That it should be so is hardly surprising, since many of the pieces in the manuscript pose formidable editorial problems (inasmuch as they can be deciphered at all), and since virtually nothing is known about the manner in which they would have been performed and accompanied, nor about the circumstances under which they would have been heard.

The Binchois Consort presents a disc which demonstrates the beauty and grandeur of the music performed daily in princely chapels of fifteenth-century England. It illustrates the sheer variety of types of singing, some of it virtuosic in its brilliance. Specifically it offers sacred ceremonial pieces written either for Henry V himself, as King, or to invoke the saintly patron of the House of Lancaster, John of Bridlington, as well as a selection of intricate motets.

The second son of Martín García de Anchieta and Urtayzaga de Loyola, who was a great-aunt of the future saint, Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, members of a leading family in the Basque country, Juan de Anchieta was born in 1462 near Azpeitia in Guipúzcoa in the Iraurgui valley. Although there is no information about his formative years, it is possible that he served as a chorister in the chapel of Henry IV of Castile and perhaps studied at Salamanca University, where Diego de Fermoselle, an elder brother of Juan del Encina, taught. In 1489 he was appointed as a singer in the Court Chapel of Queen Isabella the Catholic, with a salary of 20,000 maravedís, increased in 1493 to 30,000 maravedís. In 1495 he was appointed maestro di capilla to the Prince Don Juan. After the death of the Prince in 1497 he returned to the service of the Queen, to be ……
From Naxos